Actress’ exit from ‘Courage’ debated
Since her Broadway debut in Stephen Sondheim’s 1981 musical “Merrily We Roll Along,” Tonya Pinkins has won a Tony in 1992 for “Jelly’s Last Jam” and was nominated for 1997’s “Play On!” and 2004’s “Caroline, or Change.”
So it was a shock when Pinkins, blaming “white creatives” behind Classic Stage Company’s Broadway production of Bertolt Brecht’s “Mother Courage and Her Children,” quit the show barely a week before its Thursday premiere.
That opening date has been postponed until a replacement for Pinkins can be found.
Meanwhile, Pinkins’ reasons for leaving the production, detailed in a statement released to Playbill, are being hotly debated.
“My perspective as a Black woman,” Pinkins wrote in the statement, “was dismissed in favor of portraying the Black woman, through the filter of the White gaze. ... When Black bodies are on stage, Black perspectives must be reflected. This is not simply a matter of ‘artistic interpretation’; race and sex play a pivotal role in determining who holds the power to shape representation. A Black female should have a say in the presentation of a Black female on stage.”
As part of her fight for a say in the roles she’ll play in the future, Pinkins says she’s starting the hashtag #BlackPerspectivesMatter.
In his own statement on the rift, Classic Stage artistic director Brian Kulick said he had tremendous respect for Pinkins as an actress and an activist: “I am so sorry that over the course of this production our views on Mother Courage diverged. Theatre is a collaborative art and we both entered this production in that spirit but, sadly, we have reached an impasse. One goes into a theatre production with suspicions and hunches and a play slowly reveals what it might want to be. Tonya and I seemed to have started with the same basic questions but reached two different vantage points.”
Pinkins says it wasn’t an easy decision to quit the production. “Not since ‘Caroline, or Change,’ ten years ago, have I had a role of this caliber,” she said, calling Mother Courage “the King Lear in the classical cannon of female roles.” “How do I walk away from what could be one of the greatest roles in my career? I couldn’t, until all my research, arguing and pleading for my character’s full realization fell on deaf ears. And then I had to.”